Gloucestershire Local History Association
Despite the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, GLHA has been continuing to operate, though in very different ways than usual. Its last quarterly ‘in the room’ Forum was held last March. Since then its AGM has been held by email and its December Forum by Zoom, including a video presentation by Paul Evans on ‘Gloucestershire Voices’, based on the Archives’ collection of oral reminiscences.
Sadly, the Association’s April 2020 Local History Day on the History of Education in Gloucestershire had to be cancelled (although we hope to re-arrange it as soon as circumstances permit), as was our Summer Afternoon meeting at Nailsworth, which is now scheduled for June 27th 2021. We were, however, able to offer two afternoon walks around Alney Island in Gloucester, led by Dr Ray Wilson of the Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology, to whom we are most grateful, even though the prevailing restrictions meant that only five places were available for each walk.
Although the pandemic has inevitably caused disruption for all the County’s local history groups, many have risen to the challenge by offering on-line talks for their members. In order to assist and encourage GLHA members in this, two documents on using Zoom were prepared and circulated to members: one by Ray Wilson and the other by GLHA Secretary, Vicki Walker, who also compiled a list of those speakers on the GLHA website’s Speakers List who are offering talks by Zoom - to access this, take a look at www.gloshistory.org.uk
Feedback from those groups who have organised Zoom talks (and from many of their members) has been very positive, and a measure of their popularity is the overwhelming success of the Association’s first Zoom lecture, on ‘Gloucestershire’s Industrial Archaeology’, generously organised on its behalf by GSIA and delivered by Ray Wilson in November: the 100 places on offer were quickly snapped up, with a waiting list of 70 people who will be offered ‘priority booking’ for a repeat of the talk on January 25th 2021.
The Association is now looking forward to a far happier year ahead and is in a strong position to continue its work, both financially and in terms of its membership of almost 50 local history groups and societies.
Highlights of lock down
It is true what they (the mass media) say! Lock down makes one use one’s eyes.
Close to home, we’ve had time to admire the succession of flowers in the garden, from snowdrops through to roses and from apple blossom to jasmine and winter box – with 14 species still in bloom.
We now have an intimate knowledge of the shrubs and flowers in the front gardens of our neighbours. Also, alas all the rusty old cars, piled up builders’ debris and overloaded dustbins.
There has also been time to watch the wildlife in our house and garden:
‘Pigeon down chimney’ – (corralled with a towel and one skinny bird released unharmed);
‘Squirrel steals the food of our avian friends’ – (dissuaded by hand clapping, and shouting – not very effective);
‘Fox gives humans the evil eye’ – (we give a long, captivated stare - fox steels quietly away)
The Archives REOPEN and REOPEN again and possibly will REOPEN yet again! Volunteers return … and return … and will return! Suitably masked with twice cleaned hands and at a social distance, we greet old friends and return to cataloguing!
Sal and Russ Self, Cheltenham Local History Society www.cheltlocalhistory.org.uk/
December 2020
Sir George Dowty 'In His Own Words'
A surprising outcome of the Dowty project was the approach, via the Dowty Heritage Website, by Sir George Dowty’s son, who had a typescript copy of his father’s autobiography that had never been published. As a result of this approach, the autobiography was published by Hobnob Press towards the end of 2020, and was edited by the project archivist Ally (in a volunteer capacity).
Books are now available for sale. Please email ally.mcconnell@gloucestershire.gov.uk for more information.
For more about the Dowty Heritage website visit https://www.dowtyheritage.org.uk/
The website records the history of the Dowty Group. You can browse through the collection of historical material, which includes photos, old documents and the memories of employees – past and present.
EDITOR'S NOTE: we don't normally promote publications, but since this one is directly related to our For the Record project and the cataloguing of the huge Dowty archive, now coming to a conclusion, we have made an exception in this case.
Not everyone has a national monument in their back yard…
I’ve been looking at the history of my house, which is a small cottage, built in 1872, a few minutes’ walk from the city centre. In the tiny back yard there is a section of the Roman wall, clearly visible and about a metre high (with a much later, inter-war red brick wall built on top of it, to raise the height of what is, in effect, a boundary wall between properties).
I didn’t know it was there, when I bought the house, until one of my neighbours (a local history buff) told me about it. It is now exposed – I’ve had it repointed (nominally, each house is responsible for the maintenance of “their” section of wall), and I’ve had the horrid white masonry paint stripped off, revealing the wall in all its nearly 2,000 year glory. On one large, locally quarried stone there is the stonemason’s mark, hammered in – a sort of roundel, with the faint image of a head embossed in it. The builders told me they had seen things like this before, and said it was the stonemason’s way of leaving his “signature” on his work. I have even had requests from local historians to come and see it!
My cottage is one of a pair, built at the same time by a speculative builder who acquired the land and seemed to want to make as much money from his tenants as possible – hence 2 small cottages, 2-up, 2-down, rather than one larger house. The same family, descendants of the builders, kept the cottages for the next 60 or 70 years, as the source of a regular income for several generations.
The house is in one of the oldest streets in Gloucester, which was known as Green Dragon Lane in medieval times (in fact, right up to the English Civil War, when the street name was changed). Apparently, there was a black and white timbered pub at one end of the street, called the Green Dragon. Not very far away are the remains of the old tram lines that once ran from Leckhampton quarry, via London Road, all the way to the Docks in Gloucester. And on one corner of the street was the Georgian built first ever Gloucester Royal Infirmary, erected by funds from public subscription in the 1780’s (now demolished, but still operational within living memory until the last 3 decades or so of the twentieth century).
I’ve looked at the first edition Ordnance Survey maps for my neighbourhood and, in 1880 the cottage was surrounded on the northern elevation by a small orchard. In Edwardian times this became a small municipal park. And in the 1930’s an art deco educational establishment was built on the site (now demolished, but remembered fondly by lots of Gloucester people).
I’ve also looked at the census from 1911, and the 1939 Register, to find out more about the people who then inhabited my house. In 1911, a fruit & vegetable hawker was the head of the household, with his wife (20 years his senior, which was unusual in those days) and their male lodger. The vegetable hawker appears to have sold his wares on or near The Cross. The lodger’s occupation was listed as postman. By 1939, the house was lived in by a retired hod carrier, whose workplace was probably at the Docks, aged at least 80 years old (again, unusual in those days), who had been born well before the house was built.
Few original features were left in the house, when I bought it. Although my new neighbour told me there would have been a coal-fired, black-leaded range in the only parlour, and a scullery where the kitchen and utility room are, probably with some sort of solid fuel enamel cast boiler for washing clothes and sheets, and an outside privy (shared with the cottage next door) in the back yard. There would have been flagstones or, more likely, quarry tiles, on the ground floor, long since ripped out. And I know, from my builders, that the original pine panelled thumb-latch doors are up in the loft space, having been dumped there for convenience during one of the many refurbishments the house has lived through.
There is a community garden round the corner – you have to pay an annual subscription which grants you access – and this is where the troops in the Civil War set up their cannons which bombarded Southgate Street and its environs during the Siege of Gloucester. The 5-storey houses, overlooking the 1.5 acre garden, many painted in pastel tones to their front facades, were built in circa 1820, so they are Regency in style, as townhouses for wealthy Gloucester merchants and sea captains, a stone’s throw from the Docks. Opposite these impressive townhouses is a rather grand church, built about 50 years after the dwellings in the then popular Italianate style, beloved by so many ecclesiastical architects of the period.
There would have been no electricity to the cottage, of course, in its first 35 or 40 years, and initially no mains gas. I recall, as a toddler in the very early 1960’s, visiting my grandmother (born 1883) who relied on wall mounted gas jets in her old house, and refused to have electricity installed because “you don’t know where it comes from, and you don’t know how it works, so I don’t trust it!”
The front of my property – set back from the pavement by 25 feet, and the width of the house – would have probably been rather like a mini-market garden, with evidence of some outbuildings, a coal store, and possibly was a source of some fresh produce for the cottages, but on a very small scale. It is now a gravel drive, for the inevitable car, and a paved courtyard space with shrubs, small trees and a seating area.
The house is now slap bang in the middle of a Local Authority conservation area, with insistence on proper roof slates, and timber casement windows and doors, with many of the cottages painted pretty colours. It would be unrecognisable to the original inhabitants when the cottages were built 150 years ago. And the few shillings a week in rent, in the mid-Victorian times, have now risen to several hundred a month in twenty-first century mortgage repayments!
My interest in house history dates back to the late 1970’s (I was at secondary school), when I became aware of Dan Cruickshanks’ campaign to prevent the historic Huguenot silk weavers’ terraces being demolished in Spitalfields, east London. Today, of course, the subject has been popularised by TV programmes such as A House Through Time, presented by academic and historian, David Olusoga.
I’ve done most of my research online (Ancestry is a rich source of digitised records), as well as talking to neighbours (including an elderly relative of my neighbour, who had lived in the cottage, as a very small boy, in 1930, when it housed something like 6 people!). I’ve also looked at maps, in the collections at Gloucestershire Archives, and had a look at Know Your Place south-west, an online history portal, which is a great source for local historians and archivists.
Every house really does tell a story, and starting out, uncovering the history of your house, is rather like being a detective – you find clues, you have a hunch, you look at the records. It’s great fun, and I’ve barely scratched the surface – what I’ve discovered, to date, has probably taken me no more than a couple of hours of research. I’d like to know more – have any inhabitants of the house had unusual names, or occupations, or have any of them been admitted to the local gaol or asylum? (I discovered this quite by chance about an occupant of a previous Victorian house I lived in). But I don’t have the time, at the moment, which is a pity but is food for thought for the future.
Why not have a go yourself, looking at your own house history? What will you discover about your house, its previous occupants and your neighbourhood? Why not book that appointment to come and talk to us at Gloucestershire Archives? We’d be delighted to see you, and very happy to get you started. It’s true that not everyone has a national monument in their back yard, but it is true that every house is rich in history.
Sally Middleton, Community Heritage Development Manager – Gloucestershire Archives.
To learn more about Stone Mason's marks visit www.gloucesterhistoryfestival.co.uk/signs-of-history/ and watch the short film Signs of History: Introducing Gloucester Cathedral and the Stone Mason's Marks by Olivier Jamin
Stonemason's marks found on the Cathedral pillars.